


a simple, small building

by Lake (beyond_belief)



Category: Gringo (2018)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 16:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17287556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/pseuds/Lake
Summary: Harry's Bar is basically a shack on the beach, and now it has Mitch.





	a simple, small building

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoyed this movie and I was really annoyed that Mitch died, so I fixed it.

Harry doesn't recognize Mitch at first, not without the beard. Then he can't say anything for too long a time, stuck between _I thought you were dead!_ and _How did you find me?_. Mitch grins, strange with his face bare, and says, "I'm not dead, Harold. Shot pretty good, but I've had worse. And the tracker is still in your hand."

Harry looks down at his hand and the pale half-moon scar. "I suppose I thought it wouldn't matter. You looked quite dead to me."

Mitch settles onto one of the barstools and says, "I can forgive that. So what's good here, at Harry's Bar?"

Harry mostly makes tropical juice things for the tourists, and says as much. Mitch slaps one hand gently on the bar. "Then I'll do one of those."

"What happened to the - the orphans? Hurricane victims?" Harry asks as he measures out pineapple juice. He's no official bartender so it's sloppy as always, but no one requires a bartender's license here.

Mitch makes a face that Harry _thinks_ is supposed to be an actual smile and not a strange delighted grimace. "They got their money."

"Well, uh. Cheers to that." 

He sets the finished drink in front of Mitch, whose still-tan face changes to an expression of surprise. "Where's yours? Have one with me, Harry."

There's no one else at the bar; it's the mid-afternoon lull when Harry generally restocks or preps the handful of things on his limited menu. The bar gives him enough to do, but it never gets so busy he can't run it by himself. 

He could have a drink with Mitch. But first: "I took your money."

Mitch shrugs, a graceful movement in his open linen shirt. Above the neckline of the ratty tank he's wearing underneath, Harry can see an ugly red scar. "Was mostly Rich's money, so I figure you earned it. Yeah?"

He raises both eyebrows at Harry and takes a long swallow from the already sweating glass.

"Yeah," Harry echoes faintly. He makes himself a drink.

*

Mitch hangs out most of the evening, occupying a corner of the bar and drinking steadily. Harry makes each cocktail with less and less alcohol, until it's only juice and white soda. He thinks Mitch knows, but Mitch doesn't call him on it. The last one, Harry makes directly in front of him and doesn't even wave the bottle of rum anywhere near it, and Mitch still takes it with a smile.

The rest of Harry's customers today - a Japanese couple who are already tipsy, giggling and taking constant selfies on their phones; three women who announce shyly that they're from Austria and have never left Europe before; and a very tan American couple he also saw yesterday, who might be on their honeymoon - suck back their hurricanes and daiquiris at the few little tables scattered under the awning, and eat their grilled fish tacos. It's much less stressful than working for Richard.

He makes Mitch a plate of tacos as well, aware of Mitch watching as he flips the filets on the little flat top grill. "You eating?" Mitch asks when Harry slides the plate across the bar. 

"A little later, don't worry about me."

The Austrians settle up and start back towards town before the sun starts to set, but the selfie couple stay through sundown, and the Americans even longer. "How long do you keep the bar open?" Mitch asks.

Harry pauses in his careful cutting of a lime. "Until everyone's gone."

"So you're going to stay open until _I_ leave?"

"You don't count," Harry says, after a moment's consideration. As a slow smile spreads over Mitch's face, he knows it was the right thing to say.

*

"Just for my own peace of mind," he says much later, when his customers have all left and he's sitting next to Mitch with his own half-glass of beer, "you're really not here to kill me, right?"

"Harry. I have no reason to do that."

Harry knocks his glass against Mitch's and finishes it off. "All right. Where are you staying?"

"Don't know yet." Mitch leans over the bar for a second, comes back with the good local rum. He raises an eyebrow at Harry, giving him a chance to protest, but Harry only nudges his glass over. He hasn't had a good solid drink in months, since the night he got wasted and kidnapped all in one go. 

"It's not much," he says, gesturing at the little house half of the bar - a shack, really, but he's been planning on fixing it up, "but if you can sleep in a hammock, you can just stay here."

"I've slept worse places than a hammock," Mitch replies. He splashes rum into Harry's glass, then into his own. "Thanks."

"Sure." The closest hotel is too far for Mitch to walk, and he's had enough to drink that Harry wouldn't let him drive, if he's even brought a rental. "You know, it's actually nice to see a familiar face for once. I don't miss Chicago, or that awful weather, but on occasion here it's - not lonely, you know? I'm not sure how to best explain."

"Been all over the world, man. I get it." Mitch taps their glasses together again. "You seem less stressed here, Harry."

"No one's trying to kidnap me here."

Mitch grins, then tries to smother it in his hand, but fails. "All right, all right. We're sorry all around," he says, sincerely this time, and reaches over to squeeze Harry's arm in a firm grip. 

"How are you not drunk by now," Harry says, not actually a question, and Mitch beams, his smile bright, and holds up his glass. 

"Years of practice, my friend. You know I gave up the bottle for a while, filled that space with do-gooding in squalid corners of the globe, but who's to say I can't do both?"

Harry has to laugh at that. "Who indeed."

He points Mitch toward the curtained-off corner that passes as a bathroom, then towards the spare hammock. By the time he's done with his own washing up and making sure the bar is as secure as it gets, Mitch is passed out and snoring, the hammock barely swaying.

*

Mitch doesn't leave.

Mitch helps him open the bar the following day - not that there's much to opening the bar, then shuffles around fixing the minor things that have been on Harry's to-list for a while but left as mostly unimportant. Then he says he's going to go into town for some supplies and walks off up the beach towards the road. Harry, juicing an orange for a customer's drink, blinks after him in confusion. 

"Your business partner?" the woman asks; the Austrians from yesterday have returned, with a few new friends in their group. 

In a way, she's not wrong, with the money and all. He settles on answering that Mitch is sort of an investor, and she takes her rum and juice down the beach to the water. Harry's always slightly concerned that someone will get drunk and try to swim, so he keeps a life ring on the wall, but most of his customers seem content to relax at the tables or beneath umbrellas on the sand, pretending their real lives don't exist for as long as they possibly can. Harry gets it - he remembers being desperate for the same sort of vacation, chasing the feeling of something entirely different from your life back home. 

He's got that now, for as long as he wants it.

Mitch comes back with a wheelbarrow full of various things. "What are you going to do with that?" Harry asks, looking at the tube of caulk, the sandpaper, the various tools.

"Fix up your place a little," Mitch replies with a grin. 

"No," Harry says.

"Yes, Harry," Mitch says, voice mocking, and sets about it.

*

Mitch gives the curtained-off corner that passes as a bathroom something that could pass for a wall, and does a bit of waterproofing even though it's hot enough here that any water that might pool evaporates quickly. Harry's shower is just a few pipes and a chain to open and close the valve; the guy he'd bought this place from had only shrugged and said it worked well enough to wash up, and nobody expected more.

Harry watches him work sometimes, admiring the economy in Mitch's movements and sometimes the flex of his back beneath his ratty tank. Sometimes Mitch catches him looking and winks, does a little shimmy, and Harry always laughs at the improbability of this whole situation. Who would have thought, a businessman turned looser businessman, on a beach with his hitman turned something like a handyman. 

He texts Sunny. _I believe I've made a friend._

It's a few hours of making cocktails and grilled fish sandwiches for his customers, and watching Mitch's trips in and out of the shanty and up and down the road with his wheelbarrow, before Sunny replies. _I'm glad! Soooo a friend or a ~friend~?_

Harry stares down at his phone. 

"Harry," someone says, and it's Mitch, pushing his sunglasses up onto his head, then leaning into the shade to reach out and turn Harry's phone in his suddenly numb hand, so Mitch can read the screen. Harry doesn't even try to pull it away. "You know what the squiggly lines mean, right mate?"

Harry swallows. "I - yes."

Mitch grins and his sunburned face crinkles up, right at the corners of his eyes. He leans in and kisses Harry's cheek with his chapped lips, and one of the customers whoops. 

"Very inappropriate," Harry says, but he doesn't mean the words, and Mitch grins again. Harry reaches out and pushes his face away, laughing. 

"Get some, Harry!" the same customer calls. Harry waves a hand at her, and Mitch laughs outright, passing a hand gently over Harry's shoulder before he goes back to his carpentry.

*

"Harry," Mitch says much later that night, as Harry scrubs down the slightly rough surface of the bar so it won't be as sticky tomorrow. The customers have all staggered off, so he's closing up. The last of the day's fresh catch is on the grill, just enough for him and Mitch to have a very late meal.

"Yes?"

"I didn't embarrass you earlier, did I?" Mitch leans against the bar, his whole attention on Harry. The open collar of his shirt is damp with sweat. He'd trimmed his beard up a little the night before; it's neat now. It suits his face. "Wasn't my intention, mate."

Harry drops the sponge back in the bucket. The bartop is as good as it'll ever get. "You did not."

"'cause, ah, I'd be down for that if you are."

Heat rises so fast in Harry's face that he feels like smoke's about to come from his ears. "You -"

"Never made much difference to me, boys or girls," Mitch continues, "spread the love and all that, everyone's good once the lights are out," and Harry's brain catches up and he realizes Mitch is talking just to talk, and he leans over the bar to put a hand over Mitch's mouth. 

"Dinner first, sex things after," he says.

*

Mitch doesn't leave, and Harry's shack slowly becomes more of a house. The bathroom gets another wall, Mitch installs a few more lights and upgrades the generator so Harry can get a slightly bigger icebox for the bar, and they obtain something a little more like a bed. Mitch welds a frame for it out of a bunch of scrap pipe he gets from somewhere in town, while Harry stands at a safe distance and watches the progress, halfway thinking about how they've officially taken _shacking up_ quite literally here, and halfway admiring the cut of Mitch's arms as he aims the torch.

"'s not a shack, Harry," Mitch says later, when Harry brings it up as they sit with their feet in the water, the only light from the moon and the bulbs strung up around the bar. "It's a home."


End file.
